


Wake

by violenteer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Infinity War, M/M, be careful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 13:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14473995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violenteer/pseuds/violenteer
Summary: Steve sits in isolation for a long time.





	Wake

Steve sits in isolation for a long time. He notices the color of the grass, whether it’s discovered or over-written in shades of gray.

 

There is a matte to the world around him. It no longer shines as it might have before. The sky has a chalky quality, the architecture surrounding him looking more like dried clay than glistening metal.

 

If he was more narcissistic, Steve might think the world changed just for him. His perception collapsed in on itself and what used to be will never show itself to him again. Maybe the world itself is a completely different beast in their crushing aftermath. Maybe no amount of rationalization can cover those tracks.

 

But that’s not the truth. What Steve sees is very real; dispassionately, he realizes the matte is intentional. The ashes of billions of souls have settled over everything in earth’s wake. There isn’t a speck of land that’s gone untouched.

 

For miles and miles, Steve’s enhanced vision picks up distorted, distressed, gray. The starkness of it keeps him from slipping into the idea that he has imagined the last twenty minutes of his life.

 

Natasha is speaking loudly to Thor. She carries a composure that Steve thinks he would understand, given a different outcome. No life should be wasted, big or small. It’s a belief Steve’s carried with him throughout time, from one century to the next.

 

But then, he hadn’t imagined a ruthless rip of the life he’d just come to claim.

 

The topic of discussion is one Steve can’t fathom. He knows he has to. He knows he’s the Captain, he’s the leader. And he worked hard to earn those titles. However hard it had been; Steve persevered without thought put toward the alternative. He grit his teeth and continued. He wouldn’t dream of letting up.

 

No one could make him. No one could take the fight from him. Steve was a walking, talking beacon of self-sustained stubborn energy that burned more intensely than earth’s young star. They were one in the same.

 

They were.

 

Vision’s corpse was painted in the shades of everyone’s ashes. He looked like he was trapped inside an old war reel. Face slack in eternal peace, radiance and knowledge drained like cold water from a tub.

 

Steve?

 

There are things that Steve should be focusing on, he knows. Natasha is sounding more and more insistent by the minute. She and Bruce are talking now. Their voices overlap each other like discordant waves on a torn shore.

 

T’Challa is gone. Steve still was uncomprehending of the spin he was in.

 

The world had been halved.

 

Bucky was dead. Once again, Bucky was dead.

 

Steve?

 

The grass felt coarse and lifeless beneath Steve’s grasp. He was pulling chunks out of Wakanda's soil just to set them aside and go for another handful. His motions were rhythmic; on the outside, Steve looked calm. It wasn’t an affectation, but rather, shock.

 

What was he supposed to do?

 

Steve had lived his life away from the public eye with Natasha and Sam at his back. He hadn’t checked — he didn’t know how — but Steve couldn’t hear Sam in the crown of voices surrounding him.

 

Nat’s was loud and clear, but Sam’s was nowhere near Steve. Which led Steve to believe that Sam was dead, too.

 

Steve had dealt with so much loss. You’d think he was on earth simply to lose. A man like him garnered the challenge. He begged the world to take what it thought he couldn’t stand to part from. He begged fate, however impassive or cruel, to warp his morals. His heart, his head. His soul. Simply by being, Steve knew he created large enemies.

 

Steve?

 

For the longest time, that hadn’t mattered. Sure there were those who wanted to see Steve fall flat on his ass and forget how to get back up. There were assholes and bullies and enemies all over the place. Steve learned how to live with them. He learned how to fight with them.

 

But he only learned by the grace of James Buchanan Barnes. The man who’d been with Steve since he was a scrawny little punk in Brooklyn getting into arguments with whatever moved. James Buchanan Barnes was a North Star in Steve’s ever-whirling sky of dark blue sorrow.

 

He made the world seem livable. He paid Steve’s bills and he was first to bat for him, every single time. Bucky had Steve’s back when his back wasn’t worth much.

 

Inseparable. That’s what they’d been called, and that’s what they were. Inseparable in both life and death. Frozen and thawed and out of time, but together through and through.

 

Steve hadn’t been with Bucky the last few years. He’d asked for T’Challa to drop the occasional line about how Bucky was doing, but otherwise Steve kept his distance.

 

How long had it been since they’d said hello to each other for the first time since the Accords? How many seconds did their hug last?

 

Steve?

 

A misplaced sense of calm eased over Steve at the thought.

 

Out of time. They were both out of time.

 

Steve accepted that. He had a long time ago. His only question was why the hell was he still on earth? Without Bucky, why was he still on earth?

 

Without Bucky. Without Bucky. Without Bucky.

 


End file.
